


What Use is Friendship?

by saliache



Series: Gondolindrim [3]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, damn it Maeglin, the fall of Gondolin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2014-03-08
Packaged: 2018-01-14 23:45:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1283143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saliache/pseuds/saliache
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A final conversation before the fall of Gondolin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Use is Friendship?

“Maeglin, what is it?” Salgant asked, worried. “You do not look well at all. Was it Tuor again?”

 Maeglin shook his head sharply, then looked at him. There was a raw despair in his eyes that hurt to see. He opened his mouth, then snapped it shut mulishly.

 Quite clearly this was a problem even pasties could not solve. “Maeglin,” he tried again. “Let me help. You’ve-”

 “I’ve made a mistake,” Maeglin interrupted. “A huge mistake.”

 “We all make mistakes,” Salgant soothed. “Let me help you through this one. As a peer, if not a friend. Turgon needs his Lords at their best, after all.”

 His jest fell flat; Maeglin only snorted humorlessly. “You cannot help me.”

 He bottled up his hurt and stored it away for later. It wasn’t going to help this situation. “Maeglin,” he tried. “Lomion. Listen-”

 A great roaring sound tore through the air, and the ground shuddered. It wasn’t hard for understanding to dawn.

 “Maeglin. Dear friend,  _what have you done?_ ”

 But Maeglin had turned to stand, and his face showed only resolve. “I did what I had to, Salgant. And I will ask you this as a friend; do not stand before me, and I swear we shall both see this through safely.”

 Salgant’s sword lay on his table, a mere armslength away. Maeglin’s was in his hand, unsheathed; he made no move. They both knew who was the warrior, and who wasn’t, and Salgant wondered that Maeglin would not strike, even now, though it benefitted him not. Perhaps there was still good in him, some part he had not traded away to the Enemy. The city shook, again and again as Morgoth’s forces began their assault in earnest.

 “My Lords! My Lords! Gondolin is under attack! The High King sends his orders; the Lord Salgant is to send his men to the Greater Mar-”

 Maeglin ran the messenger through.

 “Maeglin!” Salgant cried, horrified, as Maeglin knelt down and took the messenger’s dispatches in hand. There were only two left; they must have been the last. He thumbed them open, discarded the one with the seal of the House of the Mole, and sighed as he read Salgant’s orders.

 “No,” Maeglin murmured, seemingly to himself. “I have no choice.”

 “You always-”

 Maeglin ran him through.

 It didn’t hurt nearly as much as he feared it would. It was odd, looking down and seeing himself gutted. He was reminded of the time he had first shown Maeglin how to stuff a goose – he must look just like the goose now. And just as useless. Maeglin had struck well; he would bleed out soon.

 And he was being dragged, back through his antechambers and into his bedroom. Maeglin lay him down on his bed, and tucked him in gently, layers of thick silk and cotton hiding the evidence of his crime.

 “Goodbye, old friend,” Maeglin murmured. “This is for the best; you were never a warrior.”

 He thought he heard Maeglin calling for his seneschal, for dear Canyaquetië, ordering a troop muster even now, but his body was dying and he had to fight to be free of it, and Mandos was calling to him. 


End file.
